I'm just catching up with season 4. So far I've seen the first 3 episodes. What's struck me is how he's really become a man in his looks. Until now, I think there's been a boyishness about him, but now there's a real manliness. I like.

Ackles is one of those guys who was so unbearably pretty when he was a kid that he looked like a girl. I'm serious--as Eric Brady on DOOL he was boy band material times ten. Prettier than Zac Effron of "High School Musical." Turning 30 has done wonders for him. He's very rugged looking in spite of those long eyelashes (ain't life wonderful? The men get the eyelashes that women would die for). I love it when the script tweaks him, like when Sam and Dean captured that blond who'd been, unknownst to her, infected by that vampire and they were trying to get a description out of her:

I think the scenes in All Hell Breaks Loose II are just easier to process. I think all of us can imagine being completely broken by the death of one we love.

His scenes with Sam over his actions in Hell (both of them for that matter) are both extremely well done, but I don't have quite the connection with them, and its possible its due to the more extreme nature of the ordeal.

Dean seems more raw and broken in "Heaven and Hell." I guess that's why I prefer that scene. He just seems in despair in AHBLII.

Click to expand...

See for me, its the opposite, its Dean who's already broken (which he is), I find actually seeing him literally breaking in Hell Breaks Loose more intertesting. But why quibble (just cause I'm right, hehe) they're all great scenes.